"You did it all with such grace and class and cool that you made the hardest job in the world look like a walk in this beautiful park."

Said Michelle Obama, as "Mr. Obama looked down and wiped away tears."

She's quoted in "Presidents Line Up for Obama’s Long-Awaited Center in Chicago/Thursday’s opening drew four former presidents, as well as Bruce Springsteen, Bono and Jennifer Hudson. Chicago has seen years of planning and legal fights" (NYT).

Biden was there too, bearing with unbearable sorrow:

"For an appearance at the 2024 TwitchCon convention, Mr. Piker wore a tank top that showed off his arms"/"Some of Mr. Piker’s followers say that, by wearing jewelry..."

"... and painting his nails, he has helped to promote different forms of gender presentation"/"Fashion is something Mr. Piker, who is 6 foot 4 inches tall, has loved since he was a 'too-big' teen growing up in Turkey, he said"/"Mr. Piker, who fasts daily as part of his fitness routine, usually has his first meal around 2 p.m."/"His studio is littered with boxes of Nicorette gum and cartons of Zyn nicotine patches."

Just some of the photo captions from the NYT article: "A Progressive Mind in a MAGA Body/Hasan Piker pumps iron, likes weapons and wears pearls. His brand of masculinity has won him many fans online — and has been a useful vehicle for his politics" (free-access link).

The author is Jack Crosbie. Sample sentence: "This fluency between culture and ideology has led many to brand Mr. Piker a Joe Rogan of the left — if Mr. Rogan had a mop top and painted his nails."

I'll just say: The search for The Joe Rogan of the Left goes on... with low-level desperation.

Stray sociology:

"Many gums are made using plastics like polyethylene and polyvinyl acetate... This helps give gum its elasticity...."

"The new study suggests that most of these plastics are released from gum within several minutes, so if you tend to spit out gum and start a new piece as soon as it loses its flavor, it may be better to stick with the same piece for as long as you can."

The NYT doesn't seem to concerned about ingesting plastic in this article, "Is It Bad to Chew Gum All Day? Here’s what to consider before you pop in that second (or third or fourth) piece."

I'd say yes, it's bad. Obviously. But what do I know. There are some gums without plastic. See "I Tried 6 Non-Toxic Gum Brands With Safe, Plastic-Free Ingredients" (The Green Choice).

I tried one of them one time. It was terrible. And expensive.

"A growing number of Gen Z men are seeking out stiff chewing gum from brands that claim their products will build up chewers’ jaw muscles..."

"... giving them a more conventionally masculine look. Teenage boys hoping to improve their attractiveness in 'looksmaxxing' communities online are encountering an explosion of gum brands that position their products as the facial equivalent of a Spartan workout routine.... Hard gum has also become a frequent recommendation in Reddit groups dedicated to 'mewing,' an unproven technique for defining the jawline that traveled from incel communities online toward the mainstream."

From "Why Are Gen Z Boys Chewing on Rock-Hard Gum?/Young men are buying 'Facial Fitness' chewing gum that promises to bulk up their jawlines. But dentists say the products are not particularly effective or safe" (NYT).

The gum is expensive, probably doesn't enlarge your jaw muscles, and it can cause jaw pain and damage tooth fillings.

A stupid TikTok:

"[F]amilies of means tend to choose play-based preschool programs with art, movement, music and nature. Children are asked open-ended questions, and they are listened to."

"This is not what [the researcher Dale Farron] is seeing in classrooms full of kids in poverty, where 'teachers talk a lot, but they seldom listen to children.'... Private preschools, even home-based day cares, tend to be laid out with little bodies in mind. There are bathrooms just off the classrooms. Children eat in, or very near, the classroom, too. And there is outdoor play space nearby with equipment suitable for short people. Putting these same programs in public schools can make the whole day more inconvenient. 'So if you're in an older elementary school, the bathroom is going to be down the hall. You've got to take your children out, line them up and then they wait,' Farran says. "And then, if you have to use the cafeteria, it's the same thing. You have to walk through the halls, you know: 'Don't touch your neighbor, don't touch the wall, put a bubble in your mouth because you have to be quiet.'... 'Whoever thought that you could provide a 4-year-old from an impoverished family with 5 1/2 hours a day, nine months a year of preschool, and close the achievement gap, and send them to college at a higher rate?' she asks. 'I mean, why? Why do we put so much pressure on our pre-K programs?' We might actually get better results, she says, from simply letting little children play."

From "A top researcher says it's time to rethink our entire approach to preschool" (NPR).

I'd never before noticed that phrase "put a bubble in your mouth." Here's an article about it. Excerpt:

"The effort by Ms. Harris to address the root causes of migration, which can take years, is..."

".... unlikely to quickly produce the swift action demanded by Republicans and some Democrats to reduce the overcrowding at the border."

From "Biden Names Harris to Work With Central America on Migration/The president gave the vice president a prominent role in the politically charged issue at a time when thousands of children are being detained in facilities along the border" (NYT).

The "root causes" language is a reference to something Harris said: "While we are clear that people should not come to the border now, we also understand that we will enforce the law. We also — because we can chew gum and walk at the same time — must address the root causes that cause people to make the trek."

Walking and chewing gum at the same time is a metaphor,* initially designed to insult someone who can't do these 2 relatively easy-to-do things simultaneously. It doesn't work too much as a brag, unless you're saying that the 2 things are easy to do at the same time. 

What are the 2 things? There's a huge difference between wanting people not to come + caring about root causes and effectively enforcing all of the law restricting the border + changing the conditions that are causing people to come to the border. 

The first set of things is easy to do, damned near effortless. The second set is nearly impossible, done together or done one at a time. Might as well laugh about doing them together because you know you're not going to make much progress at all on either.

_________________________

* "The term is recorded in a Texas newspaper in [1964]. President Lyndon Johnson allegedly said that then-Congressman (and later president) Gerald Ford couldn’t 'fart and chew gum at the same time.' As early as the 1900s, it was observed that women talk a lot and chew gum a lot, but don’t 'talk and chew gum at the same time.' Entertainer and cowboy philosopher Will Rogers was described in 1926 as 'the only man in the world who can chew gum and talk sense at the same time.' It’s probable that the saying 'walk and chew gum at the same time' developed from the earlier 'talk and chew gum at the same time.'" That's at Quora. To speculate more coherently: People said women can't "talk and chew gum at the same time," then some crude fellows thought it was funner to say "walk and fart at the same time" — because walking and farting is a very funny subject. (I've seen George Carlin demonstrate the hilarity.) Then it got turned around for fun to LBJ's "fart and chew gum at the same time." Then it got cleaned up into the present-day corruption, "walk and chew gum at the same time."

"Not so long ago, the big, ambitious social novel, the novel that wanted to tell us about 'the way we live now' or 'the state of the nation'..."

"... enjoyed a prestige and cultural centrality that, in recent years, have come to seem distinctly suspect. Looking increasingly through the lens of identity, some critics have begun to see the universalizing impulse behind such books — their belief in their ability to write across differences of race and class and gender — as presumptuous if not outright aggressive, a kind of epistemological gate-crashing (especially when the author is a well-off white man). One result of this development is that readers have become skeptical when a novel about, say, a white Midwestern family bills itself, and is celebrated as, a novel about America at large. Another result is a spike in books of radical imaginative humility, in which a first-person narrator — usually a more or less transparent proxy for the author — disavows altogether the power to represent the wider world or inhabit the hearts and minds of others. Instead, these novels... center on a richly turbulent subjectivity, a welcome corrective to manly bloat and overreach."

From "To Decode White Male Rage, First He Had to Write in His Mother’s Voice/How Ben Lerner reinvented the social novel for a hyper-self-obsessed age" a book review by Giles Harvey (NYT).

The top-rated comment over there is this, from someone named Craig:

Reading this, I thought I might learn something about white male rage in the era of Trump. Instead, we get a blathering biographical narrative that wanders all around like an unguided missile, starting with a boy who wraps his genitals in chewing gum. Clearly an emotionally disturbed child, who becomes an emotionally disturbed adult, but - how does this weirdly tortured individual saga elucidate the rise of white male rage? What did I miss?

Hmm. He sounds angry.

The novel under review is "The Topeka School," and there's your Amazon link.

The Tuesday NYT crossword puzzle had a "trigger warning" theme with answers — like "bazooka bubblegum" — that began with guns, and the regular crossword-puzzle columnist at the NYT refused to blog it!

The crossword editor, Will Shortz, took over:

There was a behind-the-scenes discussion regarding Peter Gordon’s crossword, which is why I’m writing about it rather than Deb Amlen, the Wordplay editor.

She was so disenchanted with the puzzle’s gun theme — especially in this era of widespread violence — that she didn’t feel she could give it a fair write-up. [This is true. I believe that this puzzle will be upsetting to some people because of its timing, subject matter and revealer, and did not think I could be respectful or kind to it. So I thought that it would be better for you to hear from Will today. — D.A.]

I respect that, so I am writing today’s column, instead.

I liked the puzzle because of the freshness and simplicity of the idea and the elegance in the way it was done.... The revealer of TRIGGER / WARNING (26D/25D) — using this modern phrase in an unexpected way — was icing on the cake.

I added the photo for metaphorical zing. Back to Shortz (somebody stop me from saying "men in shorts"):

The puzzle’s subject of guns didn’t bother me. For better or worse, guns are part of American life. I have my own opinion about guns and their regulation, but as a general matter I try to keep my political views out of the puzzle.

Lots of things are part of American life but kept out of the NYT crossword because they're thought to be inconsistent with the escapist fun of doing the puzzle at breakfasttime. For example, defecation — also part of American life — is excluded.

I don't normally read the NYT puzzle column, though I always do the NYT crossword and I usually read Rex Parker's blog about it. It's via Rex that I ended up looking at Shortz, and the guns bothered Rex too (and before he saw Deb Amlen's resistance:

[G]uns, violence, yuck. This is a personal thing, but I don't really want to participate in crossword gunfests. Guns don't "tickle" me, I guess. Too much daily slaughter in this country for me to be able to enjoy cutesy gun-related wordplay.... But if I just pretend there's no theme, I actually like this grid pretty well, except for WANGLE, which is about the most off-putting word in the English language (67A: Accomplish schemingly). I really wanted WRANGLE there, as it's a good word, as opposed to WANGLE, which is like WIGGLE and DANGLE got together pretended to be a phallus. I mean, come on. It's got WANG right in the name.

An interesting train of thought, but the guns/phallus association is so common it's trite, except to the extent that it's funny, it's some serious analysis of the human tendency toward violence, or it's revelatory of why some people feel instinctive disgust about guns.

The Shortz column has an update:

The original photo on this column, which showed a man firing an automatic rifle at a firing range, was my choice, not Will’s. It was a misguided attempt to demonstrate that words are not just words, and pictures are not just pictures. I apologize for it, and have replaced the photo.

The replacement photograph is of an old man at a lectern, with the caption "English-Canadian musicologist Dr. Alan Walker lecturing on the music of Franz Liszt at the Mannes College of Music." That must seem to fit because the title of the column — and the clue for the answer "trigger warning" — is "Caution Before a Potentially Upsetting Lecture."

A misguided attempt to demonstrate that words are not just words, and pictures are not just pictures... I'm really not sure what that means. The explanation is itself misguided. What was Shortz Amlen attempting to do? Why would a picture of a gun demonstrate that a picture of a gun is not just a picture of a gun and that a word is not just a word? All I can think is — and thanks to the person* who made this image (which I was hoping would exist):

__________________

* The poster — based on the famous Magritte painting "The Treachery of Images" — seems to be by Dave Kinsey. I think you can buy it here.

"In 2015, Seattle cleaned up a 20-year-old 'gum wall' that had become a local landmark. The job took workers an estimated 130 hours to fill 94 buckets with 2,350lb of gum..."

"... but the respite didn’t last long: according to the Seattle Times, a flash mob began to 're-gum' the wall two days later."

From "Sticky situation: Mexico City's sisyphean battle with chewing gum/Streets across the world are littered with gum, and although many cities have tried and failed to eradicate these sticky circles, Mexico City continues to wage this seemingly unwinnable war" in The Guardian.

The photo at the link bears witness to the fun of the street art that is The Gum Wall.

I looked up the address so I could find it in Google Street View:

Handwritten notes dispensed by an ATM machine "Please help. I’m stuck in here..."

It took a while before a note recipient took it seriously. Unsurprisingly, several ATM users regarded it as a joke and did nothing. But a man really was trapped inside (for hours). (NYT.)

It's like the ancient joke of getting a fortune cookie with the message "Help! I'm trapped in a fortune cookie factory."

Know Your Memes has a piece on "Help I'm Trapped in a Factory":

“Help I’m Trapped in a Factory” is a phrasal template used in satirical pleas for help claiming to be stuck inside a factory that produces the object containing the message.... The exact origin of the phrasal template is unknown.

I think it's the fortune cookie joke.

Since the mid 1950s, the bubble gum brand Bazooka Joe produced gum wrappers with messages written on the inside, some of which purportedly contained the message “Help! I’m trapped in a bubble gum factory!”

There's also this:

Explained here.

Trump arrives at the Inaugural Concert — stopping to salute the statue of Abraham Lincoln — to the tune of The Rolling Stones' "Heart of Stone."

"You'll never break this heart of stone," Mick sings — in recorded music — as Donald Trump walks out, holding hands with Melania.

Let's keep watching.

Here's the NYT coverage:

With cameras filming his every move, even his airplane, Mr. Trump arrived in Washington a day before he is sworn in, appearing at a luncheon with supporters at the Trump International Hotel, where he praised the collective I.Q. of his cabinet members.

“We have by far the highest I.Q. of any Cabinet ever assembled,” Mr. Trump said in the remarks, which reporters heard only the first several minutes of before being escorted out.

UPDATE 1: Is Trump tweeting? Seems like he's using a device.

UPDATE 2: 3 Doors Down is performing a song — "Kryptonite" — with the line "If I go crazy then will you still/Call me Superman."

Let me get back to "Heart of Stone." That blew my mind. It was clearly cued up to began as Trump began his walk out. The song begins "There've been so many girls that I've known/I've made so many cry and still I wonder why." Given the gender politics of the campaign, that's radically insolent. And he's walking with his wife. She has to hear of the many "girls" that he's known? The song continues:

Here comes the little girl
I see her walking down the street
She's all by herself
I try and knock her off her feet

Try and knock her off her feet?! Does she just let you?

And later:

Don't keep on looking that some old way
If you try acting sad, you'll only make me glad....

UPDATE 3: Toby Keith is singing, "We'll raise up our glasses against evil forces" and holding up a big red cup of what he calls whiskey. [AND: We know Trump sees alcohol in the light of his older brother's tragic descent and death, so I don't think the alcohol-based crowd-rousing suited the occasion.]

UPDATE 4: I loved the fireworks with the military performance of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." That was properly elevated and spectacular, with reverence appropriate to the occasion and the setting. I'd have liked it if all the music had been done by the military performers, but I understand that some of the popular music suited Trump's man-of-the-people theme.

Trump's speech, with a hand-held mike, was very casual. There were some good references to national unity and a desire to serve all of the people, but too much of it leaned toward the partisan, with bragging about the campaign and even talking about polls.

I thought everyone looked great. Trump had very glossy hair. His black coat went nicely with Melania's black coat. Ivanka stood out in green. Tiffany looked better than I'd ever seen her. All the adults were super-tall. The children were adorable. But kids: No chewing gum!

A single line on a back page of Bob Dylan's website was the sole indication from his side that he sees he's won the Nobel Prize literature.

That was in the news yesterday, and we talked about it here.

But now that line is expunged:

The simple words “winner of the Nobel prize in literature”, which appeared on the page for The Lyrics: 1961-2012, have now been removed. Bob Dylan, Nobel laureate, is once again plain Bob Dylan.

Dylan... has always stepped away from attempts to corral him into being something he does not want to be.

In 1965, at the height of his fevered elevation from singer to spokesman for a generation, he was asked at a San Francisco press conference whether he thought of himself primarily as a singer or a poet. “Oh, I think of myself more as a song and dance man, y’know?” he replied.

In July 1966, following a motorcycle crash at the peak of his fame, Dylan disappeared from public view. Though it was claimed he had broken several vertebrae, he was never treated in hospital, and he later admitted in his autobiography, Chronicles: “I had been in a motorcycle accident and I’d been hurt, but I recovered. Truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race.”

Whether the latest twist in the Dylan-Nobel saga is the result of an administrative foul-up or a deliberate choice is unknown – stars’ websites are usually run with extremely limited input from their notional owners, and it’s entirely possible Dylan never knew either that his site had made reference to the prize or removed it....

I love the enigma. We love you, Bob. You don't have to make anything any clearer...

Lyric:

And I tried to make sense
Out of that picture of you in your wheelchair
That leaned up against....
Her Jamaican rum
And when she did come, I asked her for some
She said, “No, dear”
I said, “Your words aren’t clear
You’d better spit out your gum”...

"When there’s a problem, people need someone or something to blame. Among L.A. residents peeved with peafowl..."

"... Elias 'Lucky' Baldwin is a favorite target. A real estate and business tycoon, he was born in Ohio and in 1853 rode a covered wagon from Wisconsin to San Francisco.... Not that the Baldwins were the only ones in the area with peafowl. William Wrigley Jr., who created the chewing gum empire and possessed a hunk of Catalina Island, also owned them. Whether Baldwin’s birds were especially fertile or whether these other birds played a role, there’s been a gradual proliferation throughout the county over the past century. In fact, peafowl call more than a dozen L.A. County cities and towns home. And you can be sure that in just about any place where there are more than a handful of the big birds, there are just as many residents wishing they’d take their garden-wrecking, loudly squawking, prolifically pooping selves and fly the coop...."

Did you know L.A. has a peacock problem?

"Her travel expenses were also extravagant; she once spent $2,000 in chewing gum during a stop at SFO."

"An airplane departing Rome was required to do a mid-air U-turn because Imelda realized she’d forgotten to purchase cheese.... During her travels, she purchased several Manhattan skyscrapers, including the Woolworth building. (Rumor has it Imelda declined the Empire State Building for being 'too ostentatious.')"

From  "5 Shopping Sprees So Wild, They Made History."

(I guess this is a good place to remind you that if you have any shopping to do — cheese, gum, whatever... buildings — you can do it and simultaneously demonstrate love for this blog by using the The Althouse Amazon Portal... and I absolutely assure you that I didn't compose this post for the purpose of promoting shopping. I just thought it was funny. The cheese and all. Don't be greedy or excessive. Just get things you really need.)

"This is just fun for me. This is not a job. I don’t do it for the money, I do it because I love driving and because I’m a sociable person."

Says the man officially recognized as the best Uber driver in Canada.

"I only Uber when I’m upbeat, positive, feeling good, when the car’s clean, I want to go be sociable and get to know my own city a little bit more," he said. "The key is that if this ever feels like a job, I’m done. I’m out... Driving has always come very naturally to me. It’s a passion,” he said. He was raised in rural Saskatchewan, where “your driver’s licence is your ticket to freedom. This allows me to enjoy it even more, be social, meet new people, tour my own city and have some fun,” he said.

He was awarded Uber's Sixth Star medal, which he'll display in the car but not call attention to because "That would be un-Canadian."

He has 5 tips for Uber drivers: "1. A clean car... 2. Smooth driving... 3. Amenities... cold water, Perrier, mints, gum and cellphone chargers...  free Wi-Fi... 4. Music... 'chill house music'... 5. Clean personal appearance... shirt with a collar, blue jeans, driving shoes...."

Note: This man also has a regular job.

The Times of India catches Obama in "an ungainly sight" — chewing gum during the Republic Day parade in New Delhi.

He was also seen taking the gum out of his mouth while Prim Minister Modi was "trying to explain something." Was Modi trying to explain why you shouldn't chew gum during the Republic Day parade?

The Times of India includes some Twitter commentary:

[A]uthor Shobhaa De...  said, "Barack bhai working his jaws overtime and chewing gum! At least it isn't gutka. But seriously - gum during a formal parade?".

"Glad to see @BarackObama is so human. Like most Americans, he chews gum. Anyone know what brand?," was how noted film-maker Shekhar Kapur reacted.

"Barack bhai" — what does that mean? Yahoo Answers says it means "brother," but:

'Bhai' exactly means brother. But in Mumbai this term is used for gangster....

Now, what is "gutka"?

Gutka or Gutkha... is a preparation of crushed areca nut (also called betel nut), tobacco, catechu, paraffin, slaked lime and sweet or savory flavorings.... A mild stimulant, it is sold across India in small, individual-sized packets that cost between 2 and 10 rupees per packet. Gutka is consumed by placing a pinch of it between the gum and cheek and gently sucking and chewing... Many states of India have banned the sale, manufacture, distribution and storage of gutka and all its variants...

I guess Shobhaa De knew it wasn't gutka because the mouth action didn't include gentle sucking. As for Shekhar Kapur's question: "Anyone know what brand?" I, like most Americans, know that the brand is Nicorette.

Obama goes to the bookstore with his daughters.

He checks out and comments on how sad he looks in the photograph on the cover of Chuck Todd's book ("The Stranger: Barack Obama in the White House"):

Chewing and eschewing... Obama in China.

"Gum-chewing, limo-eschewing Obama riles some Chinese."

Obama emerged from his car chewing gum; he's a well-known user of Nicorette, the smoking-cessation gum. But Chinese Internet users, accustomed to the highly formal standards of their stiff party leadership, quickly characterized the leader of the world's most powerful nation as an impolite "idler," or careless "rapper."

"We made this meeting so luxurious, with singing and dancing, but see Obama, stepping out of his car chewing gum like an idler," wrote Yin Hong, a professor of journalism at Beijing's Tsinghua University, on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo micro-blog service.

However "stiff" the Chinese might be, Americans also criticize the President for chewing gum.

Putting the "gum" in "argument."

If you want to write things in gum, go here.

Signed, Your Friend,

When Vladimir Putin found his threel on Blueberry Heel...

... it was pretty surreal...



... and Goldie Hawn loved it.

Via Bloggingheads. That was uploaded to YouTube in 2010. Some fundraiser. When? I don't know. Maybe you can figure it out from the shiny happy faces of the various Hollywoodland creatures.

The camera fixes on Kevin Costner, chewing gum and head-bobbing, so... along with the centrality of Goldie, I'd guess 1996. But Putin didn't become president of Russia until 2000, so I'll say 2000.

By the way, do you know what singer put out the first recorded version of "Blueberry Hill"? It wasn't Fats Domino, whose hit came out in 1956. The original version is from 1940.